4 Initiatives in the green box: consumption...., Danish Environmental Protection Agency

Build on the Positive Trends - next steps in the global effort for sustainable production and consumption

4 Initiatives in the green box: consumption to be promoted

Today, 800 million people are undernourished. There are 1.1 billion people without safe drinking water. More than 2 billion do not have access to modern power supply. And hundreds of millions live in urban slums in developing countries.¹⁰

There are thus vast unmet needs for food, water, energy and housing. A shift to sustainable patterns of production and consumption demand that these basic needs be satisfied. In other words, particular types of consumption should be promoted.

The world community’s long-term effort in this area is especially about accomplishing the goals of the Millennium Declaration, for instance the target for 2015 of reducing by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day, reducing by half the proportion of people suffering from hunger, and reducing by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water.

However, it seems only natural that a host of international organisations, as an integral part of their work, take various initiatives contributing towards short-term increases in poor people’s consumption of water, food, energy, etc. Here are three proposals.

Proposal 1: Reassessment of privatisation in the water sector (World Bank and others)

Over the past decade, the World Bank and other donors of development assistance have advised and supported privatisation within the water sector in a number of developing countries and former Eastern Bloc countries. The privatisation has been based on a fundamental assumption that private investors would ensure a more efficient water supply.

However, various side effects of privatisation have shown up in some cases, including sharp price rises, making it harder to get access to safe drinking water. This raises doubts over whether privatisation really contributes to sustainable development, which is why the World Bank, ideally in cooperation with other donors, should carry out a reassessment of its policy in this field. Representatives of poor people in developing countries should be directly involved in such work.

Proposal 2: Flexible rules for developing countries to enable the promotion of self-sufficiency in food (WTO)

The vast subsidies for agriculture in rich countries have massively distorted the world market for food and agricultural produce. Prices are pushed to the bottom to the detriment of farmers in developing countries. The sale of rich countries’ surplus production with direct export subsidies results in even more unfair competition for many developing countries.

Artificially low prices of foreign food undermine the possibilities of developing countries to build their own food security, and to develop their own potential for food production. Their chances of feeding themselves and their growing population deteriorate.

Many developing countries have today opened their markets to foreign agricultural produce far more than rich countries. This has happened as part of reform programmes and conditions attached to loans from the IMF and World Bank.

Developing countries are also, to some degree, bound by their commitments under the WTO. The extent of the developing countries’ obligations is subject to negotiations in the ongoing WTO round on trade liberalisation.

In these negotiations, the introduction a so-called ‘food-security box’ in the WTO’s agreement on agriculture should be swiftly agreed, giving developing countries the option of protecting and supporting vulnerable food markets.

Proposal 3: Realisation of the EU’s partnership initiatives on water and energy through additional funding (EU)

In Johannesburg, the EU launched partnership initiatives aimed at expanding access to water and energy in the world.

The partnership on water targets Africa and the former Eastern Bloc. The initiative is meant to contribute to reaching the goals of the Millennium Declaration on safe drinking water, and those of the Johannesburg Summit on access to sanitation.

The partnership on energy seeks to contribute towards providing poor people in developing countries with modern sources of energy, and thereby help to halve the proportion of poor people in the world.

Both initiatives may thus potentially contribute to sustainable consumption in the world. However, it is crucial to ensure permanent and substantial financing of these initiatives. Moreover, the funding must be additional, i.e. not merely charged to the budgets already allocated to promoting sustainable development.

Furthermore, a coherent relationship should be established between the EU’s partnership initiative and the club of countries who committed themselves in Johannesburg to quantitative targets for the expansion of renewable sources of energy. The funds of the EU’s energy initiative should be spent with a clear intention to contribute to meeting these quantitative targets.